[pdonis]

No, there's another possibility: automation has increased productivity, so that the same n workers are now producing a lot more product, which can be sold for a lot more money, enough more to pay for the additional cost of automation, plus the increased wages/salaries of the workers (since they are now more highly skilled than they were before; they're robot maintainers and programmers instead of assembly line workers), and still leave increased profits.

In other words, the real benefit of automation is to raise everyone's standard of living by raising the average productivity of human workers.

[stretchwithme]

That is what has happened.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo